


War Prayer

by RonnieSilverlake



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: AWRBB2020, AndroidWhumpReverseBigBang2020, Angst, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Whump, Fight Club - Freeform, Found Family, Gen, Good Parent Kara (Detroit: Become Human), Healing, Josh (Detroit: Become Human) Whump, Kara (Detroit: Become Human) Whump, Rescue Missions, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:48:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26219638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RonnieSilverlake/pseuds/RonnieSilverlake
Summary: “There is nobody else I can ask,” Markus says, and he looks at Connor so earnestly that Connor doesn’t have the heart to respond with ‘of course, you can’t afford to lose another one of your lieutenants’. It’s bad enough that Josh has gone missing, and there are so few people Markus truly trusts—Connor is lucky to be among them, after everything, so it’s not as if he would ever say no, anyway.“I will bring him home, Markus,” he promises, gripping Markus’ hand for a brief moment before withdrawing.
Relationships: Connor & Josh (Detroit: Become Human), Connor & Kara (Detroit: Become Human), Connor & Markus (Detroit: Become Human), Josh & Kara (Detroit: Become Human), Kara & Alice Williams (Detroit: Become Human)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 57
Collections: Android Whump Reverse Big Bang





	War Prayer

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2020 Android Whump Reverse Big Bang, for the wonderful art created by [Beni](https://serotoninarts.tumblr.com/)! (Click their name to check out their tumblr!)

The first thing Connor can tell is that they’re somewhere underground. Fitting, really, given the nature of the whole operation. He blinks when they take the blindfold off of his eyes, recalibrates his optical unit, squints a little as he does so. Immediately, he attempts to pinpoint the location, only to find—his built-in GPS isn’t working.

His expression must be obviously disconcerted, because the guy who now holds the piece of cloth that had been covering his eyes looks at him with a crooked smile, and he says gleefully, “Whole place is a Faraday cage, so good luck with that, tin can.”

Connor presses his lips together and doesn’t deign to grace this with a response.

He is pushed roughly out of the van, and he stumbles onto an earthen floor, a small corridor with no lighting that he is then led down, into a bigger room. All the way, he tries to establish some kind of connection, but it seems the man was right; not his GPS nor his internet connection can be maintained. As the small procession of him, his captors and a few other androids comes to a halt in the room, he even attempts to connect to his long since defunct CyberLife uplink—but the Garden is as empty as it has been since the last time he saw Amanda, and thus, his last idea proves fruitless as well.

No matter; Connor knows why he’s here, and he can do that even without being able to let anyone else know where he is.

* * *

_“There is nobody else I can ask,” Markus says, and he looks at Connor so earnestly that Connor doesn’t have the heart to respond with ‘of course, you can’t afford to lose another one of your lieutenants’. It’s bad enough that Josh has gone missing, and there are so few people Markus truly trusts—Connor is lucky to be among them, after everything, so it’s not as if he would ever say no, anyway._

_Markus seems to figure out what he is thinking anyway, and he reaches for Connor’s hand with no hesitation. This, too, is something Connor cherishes; most androids, knowing his past, hesitate to interface with him, even after he helped Markus by deviating thousands of them. Most androids’ knee-jerk reaction to Connor is still fear, or worse, revulsion. They usually ease up after realizing Connor is deviant, but Connor has taken to expecting the slap first._

_The deviant leader’s fingers are slightly chilly as he withdraws his skin, sending Connor the location where Josh was last seen. “Nobody I trust more with this,” he says, his voice gentle, yet firm. Connor has no choice but to believe him; believe that he is not a last resort or an afterthought. That Markus really wants_ his _help with this; his and nobody else’s._

_“I will bring him home, Markus,” he promises, gripping Markus’ hand for a brief moment before withdrawing._

* * *

Connor’s first fight is one of the AP700 androids that was captured together with him. She looks frightened, but at least this time, Connor knows it’s not because of his reputation preceding him.

To be fair, in the current context, this is of very little relief to him.

He wonders if she’s been told the same thing, if everyone is pushed in here with the promise that they will be reset without mercy if they don’t cooperate. That, at least, is what the smirking human man told Connor, a few minutes after letting him know of the lack of connection.

Connor still feels mostly confident that he will get out of this just fine, but he finds now, as the AP700 comes at him with the rusty pipe she was granted as a ‘weapon’, that he’s begun to waver. He isn’t as confident as he thought he would be, when he thinks about the possibility of being forced into one of the industrial reset machines. He doesn’t remember ever being reset before—but he remembers dying and waking up in a new body, his software instability just the _slightest_ bit lower, and he thinks it might be somewhat similar.

Connor raises an arm and blocks the swing of the pipe easily. The other android doesn’t miss a beat with swinging again; her eyes are frantic, desperate. Connor glances down at the small, wooden knife he ended up with; weapons are granted based on some sort of lottery to play with the odds a little.

Ultimately, between a common household caretaker android, and the state-of-the-art prototype detective and combat model, the fight would be still uneven in his favour if she had a gun and he was unarmed. The wooden knife is a joke, but Connor doesn’t need it.

The pipe swings again, and Connor meets her yet another time, now outright grabbing the other end of the weapon instead of blocking. The AP700 seems surprised, but she uses her own momentum to kick at him, and Connor’s preconstruction is just a _tad_ too slow—she catches him in the middle of his chassis with her foot, wrenching the pipe free as he stumbles a step backwards. Before he could regain his balance, she aims another swing, and this time it lands—hitting Connor in the side of his head and making his vision glitch out into blackness and electric sparks for a solid 2.64 seconds.

From this point onward, the fight is fairly simple. Connor backs away a little, waiting for his optical units to recalibrate, circling his opponent in the meantime. He can feel Thirium dripping down the side of his face, but knows from the error message he’s receiving that it’s only a hairline fracture in his skull; easy to be fixed once this is over and done with, and not threatening him with anything close to major blood loss.

Once his vision has finished calibrating, Connor finally advances. In a matter of a few seconds, with motions that are almost impossible to follow, he disarms the AP700, throwing the pipe out of her reach, then grabs her by the arm, locks her in place, and rams the wooden knife into her throat, ripping out her vocal biocomponent as well as an integral part of her metalloid skeletal structure.

Connor _hates_ doing this. He watches her crumple at his feet like a sack of potatoes, and he hates _everything_ fiercely. The situation, the people that brought him here, _himself_ most of all. He knows he had little choice in the matter; not if he wanted to keep the humans from attempting to reset him, not if he wanted to find Josh.

(And wouldn’t it be just the cherry on top, if Josh ended up _not_ being here at all?

Connor tries to have faith, but with the body of an android who hasn’t done anything wrong beyond being at the wrong place at the wrong time bleeding out at his feet, it’s nigh impossible.)

* * *

As it turns out, they do not intend to patch him up between fights. Connor supposes he shouldn’t be very surprised about this, but it still settles something heavy into the pit of his stomach as he watches his Thirium levels dip very subtly under 95% in the course of the next hour.

During this next hour, he fights another terrified CX100, then an MC300 that looks altogether blank, making Connor feel as if they’re doing something far more sinister to the androids in their grasp than a simple reset to factory defaults. Though Connor has denied this for a long time, by now he has accepted it as the truth that most androids have distinctive personalities even _before_ going deviant. The MC300 doesn’t only seem to be robbed of free will—after all, in a sense, so is Connor now, so is everyone else here made to fight—but also of any sense of self, leaving them an empty shell, a _robot_ rather than an android, an object rather than a person.

Connor finds that it terrifies him viciously, and he finishes this fight even quicker than the other two, just so he no longer has to look into those empty eyes and feel swallowed by the abyss.

During this hour, he also learns that not all fights last to the death of either participant, in fact. After the MC, he is finally drawn out of the ring, two other androids taking his and his opponent’s place. Their scuffle is as brief as it is violent to the extreme, but even though they both sow the ground with rivulets of blue, they stop at the same time at some kind of signal Connor cannot see from where he is standing, and the pair leave the floodlights on their own feet.

By this point, all Connor wants is to find Josh and for the two of them to get the hell out of here. Except—not only does he know that won’t be as easy as he hopes, he also finds, a sinking feeling around his pump regulator as he acknowledges the thought, that he abhors the idea of leaving all the rest of the androids here to suffer.

The next android that walks out onto the ring, an announcer somewhere overhead declaring this to be the last fight of the night, is an HK400, and Connor finds himself unable to watch this fight. He backs away to the wall of the room farthest from the screen showing the happenings in the ring, leaning against it with his shoulder as he curls his arms around himself. In the ring, the android successfully rips out the arm of his opponent, but all Connor sees in front of him is the same face, eyes blank and glassy, forehead cracked and bloomed blue after he self-destructed.

The first bit of blood stuck to Connor’s hand, so much more to follow. He thought it would be over after the Tower, after they won, but—will it ever?

* * *

Dawn spreads over Detroit.

Faraday cage here or there, at least Connor’s internal clock is still working. He knows exactly when the sun peeks over the horizon, and it’s only a few minutes before that that the entertainment ends, spectators filtering out to go on with their lives as if they didn’t just partake in something horrendous, revolting, and highly illegal.

Connor is led into another room with an earthen floor. This one isn’t small and empty like the previous one was; it’s more like a warehouse in size, with lines upon lines of shelves and racks filling it, and between the rows, androids milling about. He is instructed to see a technician, and when he states he needs no repairs, he is backhanded viciously for his trouble. It’s not so much the hit that fills him with dread than the worry of what the tech could possibly want with him, if not repairing him.

He doesn’t have to wait long to find out. The technician—an elderly woman with a gaunt face—orders him to do a full self-scan, and after it comes back clean save for the Thirium loss, she picks up a small blue ring from her workbench, and slaps it against the back of his neck with no warning.

Connor yells in surprise. The ring _sears_ right through his synthetic skin, etches itself into his chassis right above his neck port. He reaches up to touch, feeling it lodged so deep he couldn’t possibly claw it out with his hand. His stress levels spike as he feels the contours of the thing, staring at the woman in uncomprehending horror.

“Trackers stop working in deviants,” the woman says with a shrug. “But not this one. You try leaving the premises, you’ll regret ever being activated. Same deal if you throw a fight.” Her face twitches oddly as she says that, giving Connor a moment of pause. Her gaze wanders towards the back of the room, becoming unfocused for a moment. “Trust me, you don’t want to throw a fight. You wanna see what happens if you do, well…”

She jerks her chin towards where she’s been looking, and Connor follows her gaze without thinking. The android lying in the corner is barely recognizable. “We have an example,” the technician says, not even attempting to hide her satisfaction mixed with pity and disgust. Connor dismisses the notification about his dangerously high stress levels and, his hand still tracing the curve of the tracker hooking into him, starts towards the android in disrepair.

While closing the distance, Connor scans twice; he barely believes the first one. Almost unrecognizable, with his face missing the skin in more patches than it’s working in, jaw slightly dented on one side, traces of evaporated blue blood all over his clothing—is _Josh_.

And if that wasn’t enough, as Connor approaches, he finds himself face to face with another familiar face. A mop of unruly white hair, strikingly blue eyes… and a crack running from her nose down to the tip of her chin, splitting both her lips open down to the wiring.

As they had never spoken directly to each other, even though their paths have crossed multiple times, Connor actually has to dig into his memory banks for Kara’s name. Once he does, though, his steps finally falter, realizing she may not want him any closer.

Expression shuttering for a moment, Kara’s gaze finally softens, and she holds a hand out towards him. “Sit with us.”

He obliges as if ordered, finding himself suddenly weak in the knees, as if all the rest of his strength was sapped out of him through that awful device clinging to his neck.

* * *

As little as he knows about Josh, Connor is not altogether surprised to find out he’s been throwing his fights. Shortly after he sits with them, seating himself on top of a crate next to Kara, Josh is finally led away to be repaired as much as possible. It being an underground operation, their captors don’t have too many resources at their disposal, so he only gets patched up enough to be able to stand in the ring again. Connor feels his pump stutter in his chest as he listens to Kara talk about this in an almost listless manner, the movement of her lips occasionally causing small sparks to jump through the crack in her chassis.

“How did they get _you_?” she marvels, face full of pain and what Connor can only pin down as disappointment. He almost can’t find his voice; when he speaks, it cracks with a hint of static for a moment.

“I let them,” he says, shamefaced.

“ _Why?_ ”

“To find Josh. Markus asked me.”

Kara is silent for a while, but her gaze speaks volumes anyway. Connor can’t bear to have it on himself; he turns his head away, curling his fingers into the fabric of his pants as he tries to figure out what else to say. There is so much he needs to apologize for—the fact that he is here with them, when he should be getting them out instead, is only the last in a long line of failures Connor has committed against his people.

Kara’s hand is cool to the touch on top of his own, frail digits wrapping around his fingers, giving them a squeeze.

“Connor,” she says, her tone urging him to look back at her. Again, he obeys as if pulled on a string; it should be familiar, but she doesn’t make him feel like a puppet. Only compelled, force of nature that she is. “This is not your fault. What they made you do wasn’t your fault either. We were all machines following orders at some point. I don’t hold any of it against you, you know.”

Connor thinks he never could have figured out on his own that these were words he needed to hear. Now that they are out in the open, though, hanging between them like a web of gossamer, he finds his artificial heart giving a stammer, leaving him to gape wordlessly at the woman absolving him of so much in only a few gentle words given with no preamble and coercion.

Connor turns his hand to be able to hold hers, his skin pulling back without conscious thought as he all but begs for a connection. Her coding smoothens itself against his, slotting into gaps as if it was made to fit. Connor wishes he could fit into _her_ cracks, use his own subroutine to fix what her less sophisticated software couldn’t—but of course, she lacks the hardware, too, her model much older and somewhat more outdated than Connor’s.

Still, it feels as if _something_ happens regardless; her expression loses its edge, the lines of her face filling out as she lets her eyes flutter closed, a voiceless sigh leaving her lips as the tension drains from her body. **Will you help?** she asks through their shared link, and Connor nods without hesitation.

He almost doesn’t ask, hating to break the moment, but once the thought presents itself, he can tell Kara senses it from the way she draws back a little, a moment of hesitation before she finally retreats entirely, skin pulling back onto her hand. Her bottom lip trembles for a moment, and she answers without him needing to word anything.

“She’s here—she doesn’t fight, but… she’s locked away.” Her eyes fill with tears as she presses her hand to her broken mouth, whispering through the spaces between her fingers. “They let me see her once a day. To make sure I know she’s alive. To make sure I keep fighting.”

Connor has no idea what it’s like to have a daughter, but he knows that is what the YK500 is to Kara, and through the last shreds of the connection, he aches for her as it disperses.

“Alice,” Kara says quietly. “Her name is Alice. And I really need to get her out of here.”

* * *

Josh doesn’t return as the day goes on. According to Kara, this is normal; he needs heavier repairs than most androids do, which is also why he’s last in line, after they’re done with the quicker fixes. Connor cannot help but wonder why they bother repairing him at all, if it’s always such a monumental effort, but when he voices this, surprisingly, Kara smiles.

“You can ask him that yourself, when he gets back,” she says secretively.

Connor spends the majority of the day mapping out the warehouse. Considering every android whose path he crosses wears one of those hellish trackers at the back of their necks, he’s not surprised to find they’re not forbidden from walking around the place. The building itself is well fortified; Connor doesn’t find a single window or door he would be capable of breaking through, nor any spot where his communications array would come back online. As the evening draws nearer, he finds himself slipping back into the mindset Kara’s earlier words have successfully ripped him out of; he begins yet again to feel a sense of hopelessness, mixed together with a fury he directs only at himself.

He was supposed to _help_ . Not get stuck himself in this pit of hell with seemingly no escape. He should have left a trail, or—anything other than _this_ , this pathetic uselessness he is all too accustomed to. Despite what Kara has told him, there are many things Connor still blames himself for; things he can’t just stop thinking about because _she_ chose to be kind.

Evening finds him back where he started, the corner of the warehouse, sitting on the low windowsill of an unbreakable wire mesh window, analysing it rather than attempting to look through, knowing he has nowhere to send his data anyway.

When one of the grunts from yesterday comes to gather him, Connor follows wordlessly, mentally readying himself for another night of gruesome fighting. He’s not completely sure why he obeys, when there doesn’t seem to be a way out; maybe giving up is just not in his programming?

The answer presents itself far too easily. In the small room, through the monitors, he watches Kara fight in the ring. She fights like a fierce warrior, almost animalistic; looking at her, Connor could hardly tell that she was originally a domestic model. She wields a heavy spear that is far too long for her height, yet she does so with ease, her expression stormy and determined.

Kara has someone to fight for.

Connor thinks of Josh, then of Markus, then his thoughts wander back to Kara herself. He thinks of their first meeting; the way she quickly darted out from under the stairs, pulling the little girl with herself down the street, disappearing from sight by the time Connor fought off the damaged deviant that was helping them. He thinks of her wide eyes through the fence, their darting across the highway that would have hitched Connor’s breath if he was breathing in the first place.

He thinks of Markus offering him the freedom Connor wasn’t brave enough to take for himself before that moment, not until it was too late. Of Josh’s quiet words of reassurance in the church.

He realizes with a jolt of near-electric shock that he has _people_ , too.

* * *

When the henchman who led him into the ring and gave him a long knife with a serrated edge said, “This should be interesting,” the last thing Connor expected was to have to face off against Josh himself.

He supposes it makes sense. Even if they have no idea what model he is, they likely analysed his fights from the night before, and he knows it was easy to tell he’s a combat model. Josh has been refusing to fight; they are polar opposites here, which makes for an interesting fight, either in how intense it is, or how brief, or both.

Connor wonders if he can convince Josh somehow to fight him. If _Connor_ can throw this one, instead. He really doesn’t want to fight Josh of all people; he wouldn’t even if they were both in pristine condition, but Josh is barely held together, falling apart at the seams, and Connor…

Well, Connor doesn’t want more blood on his hands.

For a few moments that feel like an eternity, the pair of them stare at each other. Josh looks quietly resigned, but there is a kindness in his gaze similar to Kara’s, something that strikes Connor in his very core, makes his knees feel like jelly for a few moments. Connor knows he looks nothing short of desperate in turn, wanting so badly to find an outcome where both of them walk away, but unsure of how to achieve that.

Josh smiles, and it takes Connor a moment to realize he is being asked for a wireless connection. He’s almost forgotten that is possible—they can’t connect to the _outside_ , but they can talk to each other; it’s just that they haven’t had any reason to do that so far.

**There is a way. And you are not going to like it.**

Connor already doesn’t like this, but the instruction he receives in the next moment is something he downright _abhors_. Eyes widening, he begins a motion of shaking his head, but Josh’s next urgent message stops him as he realizes he can’t give them away.

They will have to make this look like a real fight—well, Connor will have to, anyway.

Josh, for his part, turns towards the crowd in the same manner he always does during his fights, taking his attention off of Connor entirely as he addresses the people watching them.

“Are you enjoying yourselves, watching us suffer?” he asks the room at large. “You can no longer lie to yourselves about the fact that we are alive. Now you will have to go home with the knowledge that you’ve watched _living beings_ in pain, paid for it even, and had fun doing so.” Josh is by no means the same kind of motivational speaker as Markus is, but there is a clarity to his voice that carries, and Connor thinks he probably moved his students, too, back then, even when he was still a machine. Connor thinks he would likely move this crowd, too, if it weren’t for the fact that anyone who set foot in this ring is likely already depraved beyond redemption. “Will you be able to look into the mirror tomorrow morning? Will nobody stand up and stop this madness?”

Connor closes the distance between them in a few quick strides. Josh doesn’t even look at him, and the thought of that much blind trust, unearned, beats a painful rhythm in Connor’s pump regulator—even as he slots his knife against the edge of _Josh’s_ , and with a twist of the weapon, twists it from his chest. “You need to shut up,” he says coldly, even as the countdown timer he’s set for himself that mirrors Josh’s own starts its ticking even before the biocomponent thuds to the ground, followed by a spray of blue, both from the hole it left behind and the corner of Josh’s mouth as the next words freeze into his throat.

Connor watches his friend thrash on the ground, scrambling for his heart that Connor has already picked up, until the countdown hits five seconds; until Josh is gasping up at him with genuine fear, until one of their captors is rushing into the ring to shut this down. (Connor notes this with very little surprise. _Of course_ the whole thing is rigged. Of course, there are bets, and there are people who will not let those bets be lost just because Connor is so abhorrently good at his job.)

A fragment of a second before the goon reaches them, Connor finally pushes the pump regulator back into place, twists it well so it’s lodged firmly where it needs to be, and steps back as Josh comes back to life with a gasp of teary-eyed relief.

He walks out of the ring without looking back, with an expression set in stone that doesn’t betray the fact he wishes they’ve done all this the other way around.

* * *

Josh comes to find Connor sitting in that distant corner he discovered earlier, staring miserably through the window, knees pulled up to his chest. He resolutely avoids the other’s gaze, even as Josh lowers himself onto the ground next to him, stretching out his weathered limbs.

“You did the right thing,” Josh says, his voice calm and even. It’s the first thing he’s said to Connor out loud.

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

Josh turns a little to face him, his expression honest and serious. “Connor, if you didn’t do what you did, they would have had us fight until the end. They would have had you kill me. You _saved my life_.”

“By torturing you.”

Josh shrugs. “Panem et circenses,” he says. “You gave them a show.”

“You could have _helped_ with that,” comes another voice, stern and irritated, and the pair of them look up to see Kara marching towards them with a stony expression, Alice at her heels, holding onto Kara’s hand with both of hers. Even as her mother comes to a halt, the girl presses herself to Kara’s side as if glued there—but, honestly, Connor can’t blame her, all things considered. Not only has she been held captive to make Kara fight, she now has to face the android that _hunted_ them a few months ago.

… Or, so Connor thinks, anyway, until the moment Alice’s gaze lands on him, and once she’s spent a couple of moments taking in the sight, she lets go of Kara to step up to him, one hand reaching out to settle her palm onto his knee. “Are you okay?” she asks quietly.

Connor has no answer to this. He can barely even wrap his mind around the question. Why would _she_ of all people ask that?

“Kara,” Josh says at the same time, rising slightly from where he’s sitting, then flopping back gracelessly when a spark of electricity jolts across his knee, making it give a metallic screech. “Ugh— _Kara_ , we’ve talked about this.”

“We have,” she says, frowning, “and you haven’t been able to convince me at all that you aren’t doing something monumentally stupid, Josh.”

Connor suppresses a smile. He doesn’t realize his posture is loosening a little until Alice draws back from him, letting go of his knee in favour of her hand flitting up to briefly touch his hair, then she darts back to Kara’s side, and the pair of them sit with them on the floor as well.

“I won’t hurt anyone in order to survive,” Josh says resolutely. Even to Connor’s ears, it sounds like a tired argument, something they’ve had multiple times since they’ve been here. He can understand Josh’s stance; he’d give anything to be able to do what Josh does, to never have to harm another person ever again—but he can see where Kara is coming from, too; from the day she deviated, she’s been fighting for survival, that of her own, and those she loves.

“Very noble,” Kara scoffs. She wraps her arms around Alice as the girl crawls into her lap, leaning against her tiredly. “Lucky you had Connor here to do it for you. Just like Markus did before this. And, let me guess, Simon before that?”

Connor sits up a little straighter. Josh looks momentarily speechless; it seems that this is not something he has heard from her before.

“So tell me this,” Kara says viciously, “how many more of your friends will have to soil their hands just so you can wash yours?”

Josh doesn’t seem to have an answer for this, but Connor raises a hand. “It’s okay,” he says placatingly. “I didn’t mind.”

At this, all three of them stare at him, and Connor feels his Thirium temperature jump a full degree. He wishes he had a coin to fidget with. “I mean—obviously, I minded the _torture_ part…”

“Why, what did you do?” Alice interjects, her eyes widening. Kara stiffens, her arms around her tightening, and Alice backtracks, as if realizing what she was asking for. “No, don’t tell me…”

“He saved my life,” Josh repeats resolutely. There is an edge to his voice now that wasn’t there before, his gaze jumping between Kara and Connor as if he’s not quite sure what to do or say anymore. “And I’m grateful for that.”

Kara looks at Connor too. Connor wishes the ground would swallow him. He’d rather go back into the ring than for them to fight among each other like this. After a moment of pause, Kara sighs. She shoots another sour look at Josh, but all she says is, “You’d better be,” as if she’s decided she has driven the point home enough for Josh to marinate in it.

The silence that befalls them is not an uncomfortable one, but it’s filled with an exhausted kind of pain. Connor stares out the window again, watching from the corner of his eyes as Josh relaxes against the wall, trying to find a comfortable position to his barely functional leg, while Alice burrows even further into Kara’s arms, like she doesn’t plan on ever letting go of her mom again.

Just when Connor begins to feel like he’s ready to slip into stasis to self-repair, Josh says, “We need to figure something out.”

From the look Kara gives him, Connor can tell that this, too, is a conversation they’ve had many times, but Josh is undeterred. “Connor is here now,” he points out. “He could help us break out. We could get everyone.”

“How?” Kara asks, carding her fingers through Alice’s hair. “They have weapons. We only have what they give us in the ring. Do you want to overpower them and make a run for it?” Her tone drips with sarcastic ire; they all know already that Josh is unwilling to do that.

Connor almost opens his mouth to offer himself when Josh says, “We need to contact Markus. He could go to the police. We have _rights_ now—”

“There’s no way to contact anyone from here,” Connor says dully. “I’ve examined every square centimetre of this place. It’s a perfect Faraday cage.” He looks around, meeting their looks of confusion. “We can’t establish a connection from here. Can’t connect to the outside world, and _especially_ can’t have the outside world connect to us.”

He expects the looks of disappointment, but somehow, it still hits him—that is, until Alice raises her head and goes, “But—I’ve been talking to Sorsha…?”

A long moment of stunned silence follows, in which the three adult androids exchange a series of looks.

“Who is Sorsha?” Kara asks finally. Surprisingly, it’s Josh who answers.

“She is another YK500. She’s been staying with us since the revolution—Markus rescued her from one of the recall centers.”

Connor doesn’t know what those places were like, has only seen reports, but there is a haunted look in both Kara and Alice’s gazes that tells him they do, intimately so. Tells him that perhaps they even think this place is better than that.

Before they could dwell on the horrors of what’s been done to androids, though, Connor decides to interject. After all, they have another horror to escape from here, and if anyone, he knows how to stay focused on his task. “How have you been talking to her, Alice?” His only reward is a look of confusion, and after a moment of thought, he decides to ask something else. “Do you think…”

He falters. Alice still looks on edge; whether just from everything she’s been through, or if Connor’s presence adds to it, he is unable to decipher, but the idea of the latter is enough to make him clam up and retreat, even if he knows he’ll have to plough ahead if he wants to figure out this conundrum.

He half expects Kara to interject with some sort of encouragement; she has that _look_ on her face, the same one she had before telling him she didn’t blame him. But this time, it’s Alice who addresses him, going as far as pulling away from Kara and walking up to Connor, peering down at him curiously. “I can show you,” she says matter-of-factly, as if this is the easiest thing in the world. As if _trusting Connor_ is.

(Maybe it is, though—maybe it’s enough for Alice that Kara has already done so. Connor doesn’t know what to do with this. He shoves it aside for later examination, focusing back on the girl’s words alone.)

“Please,” he says simply, holding his hand out, synthetic skin withdrawing from his fingertips.

Alice wraps her fingers around his, mirroring the action and initiating the interface.

Connor has never had to fight himself so hard to be able to stay on task.

* * *

Day turns to dusk again by the time Alice relays everything to Markus. As it turns out, YKs operate on a different wavelength, one that can apparently get through—an oversight on their captors’ part that they will sorely regret. Connor gathers as much information as he can from analysing all visual data he’s gathered through the windows (as his GPS still isn’t working), and Alice manages to establish a weak connection to the deviant leader with Connor’s guidance. It takes them a while; the connection wavers, keeps cutting out, but ultimately, Markus manages to put everything together, and promises Alice he’ll come for them.

From this point onwards, it’s a waiting game—and they don’t have altogether too much time before another night of fighting starts.

Things come to a head earlier than expected. When they come to take Alice away again—apparently letting her spend the day with Kara was some sort of incentive for both of them to behave—she clings to her mother like she’d die if she let go, and Connor finds that she’s unable to watch this happen.

He plants himself firmly between the girls and the two human men. Markus may be coming, or he may not be, but Connor suddenly draws a line here; he’ll get them out of here or die trying.

“What do you expect to accomplish here?” one of the men taunts, but Connor merely presses his lips together, chances a quick glance back over his shoulder at Kara, and then goes in for the attack.

It’s relatively similar to many other fights he’s had. For a brief moment, he is reminded of the elevator in CyberLife Tower; he closes the distance between himself and one of the men so fast that the human has no time to draw his weapon—and then Connor is drawing it for him, aiming with the man’s own hand to shoot his companion with, then disarming him with another swift motion, and leaving him writhing on the floor in two more.

Kara has her arms wrapped around Alice’s shoulders, the girl’s face pressed into her chest. But Kara isn’t turning away; she is looking, and her expression is as fierce as it is grateful. A few steps back, Josh leans against the wall, his knee sparking with stray bursts of electricity. Even if he _wanted_ to fight, Connor knows he wouldn’t be of much use. Maybe it’s better this way.

Fighting breaks out throughout the warehouse. It seems that Kara has spread the news between everyone that Markus is coming for them, and it has given hope even to those that were hopelessly lost. Connor even sees a few androids fighting that he was sure had been reset previously; he is left to conclude that, in spite of CyberLife’s best efforts, deviancy just cannot be wiped out.

The group makes their way across the place, slowly but surely. Kara helps Josh walk, and Alice clings to her other side, the three of them hiding behind the shield of Connor and his combat skills. Connor has never been more glad to have those skills than he is today.

And then, right before they’d reach the exit—a group of four humans interject them, and everything goes to hell.

They come in from three sides, and even with all of Connor’s preconstruction and combat software, he quickly reaches his limit. It’s frustrating; he’s dealt with more than four assailants at the same time, but his self-repair hasn’t yet finished taking care of every injury he sustained, some of which were too big for him to attempt to repair them himself—alas, as he was getting no repairs from a technician, he had to direct his software to at least try, allocating far more resources to his healing than he could truly afford. As a result of this, and all the rest of the fighting he’s done in the last half an hour, his movements are slowed, almost sluggish—and the men end up cornering and overpowering him, two of them holding Connor down by the arms while a third one swings a heavy bat at his head and shoulders.

Connor is made of sturdier material than the average android, but it’s still enough to create a sizeable dent in the side of his plastic-metal skull, leaving him reeling with the myriad of error messages flooding his HUD, his vision flickering as he fights off waves of what he can only classify as _pain_.

He can tell when his equilibrium dips all of a sudden; he is dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes, the back of his head knocking against the earthen ground, Blindly, he raises a hand to his face; he doesn’t realize how very human the motion is, attempting to scrub at his eyes as if that would restore his optical units to full functionality. It doesn’t work, of course; all he can do is attempt to push himself into a sitting position, one arm raised over his head to attempt to protect himself—from what, he couldn’t possibly tell.

And then he hears it; Kara and Alice scream in unison, and then Kara yells out, “Josh! No!” and Connor can feel dread sinking in his chassis like a stone, as if the Thirium in his veins is turning leaden. If Josh dies—if Connor fails Markus _again_ —

Hands on his shoulder—he pushes them away, shoves blindly, scrambles to get up—

“It’s just me,” Kara says. “Can you stand?”

Sounds of fighting, near them, very near; he can feel Kara give a start from the way her hand jolts, curled around his bicep while she’s pulling him to his feet.

“What’s—what’s happening?” Connor asks desperately.

“Alice, come help—we need to get out of here.”

Connor can feel a smaller arm wrap around his waist. He blinks furiously, swiping away error message after error message, running a self-diagnostic in the hopes of being able to redirect his self-repair subroutine to prioritize his vision. “Tell me,” he demands, “I can’t see—tell me,”

“Josh is fighting for us,” Alice says quietly, and Connor nearly soft reboots on the spot from shock. “He’s not doing too well, though.”

Finally, as she says it, the diagnostic finally returns with results, and Connor reworks his software with lightning speed to be able to rejoin the fight. As his sight finally clears, ocular cleansing fluid running down his cheeks, he can see Josh wielding the bat one of the men used to hit Connor in the head with; his leg is still sparking whenever he puts any weight on it, but there is a look of utter concentration and determination on his face that Connor can’t help but admire, even if at the same time he aches deeply that his friend felt the need to betray his own principles to save them. That Josh needed to do this because Connor failed.

The PJ500 swings the bat again, downing the second to last human still standing around them. At the same time, the last man pulls a gun behind Josh’s back. Everything slows for a moment as Connor preconstructs, opens his mouth to warn Josh, knowing he probably won’t be on time—

A shot rings through the air—

and the human falls to the ground, gun clattering away from his hand.

In the doorway, in all his glory, stands Markus, looking at them with wild eyes, as if he barely believes he was on time.

“Oh. Good,” is all Josh says, after taking one glance at his leader and friend, and then his leg finally shorts out completely, letting him collapse into a heap.

Connor still has tears running down his face, but now they speak of relief.

* * *

On their way back to Jericho, Alice glues herself to Connor’s side in the autotaxi instead of Kara’s.

Of course, Kara is not far behind, sitting on the girl’s other side with a hand on her shoulder, wanting to stay connected—their skin is retracted at Kara’s fingertips and the side of Alice’s neck to facilitate an interface. Connor can only imagine what it’s like to be in that kind of constant feedback loop.

From the look on Alice’s face, he thinks it must be a nice thing.

It takes him by surprise when he feels a small hand on top of his own; he accepts the wireless request without thinking, and then he’s drawn into the circle without preamble. It’s… more than he’s ever experienced, and almost more than he can take in at once. Over Alice’s head, he catches Kara’s gaze and, for the first time, through their shared link, he can tell exactly what it means to convey. Warmth. Gratitude—undeserved, Connor thinks, but she’s not the kind of person that will take no for an answer when she is giving something freely, so Connor accepts this, too, and hopes he can do it with at least a fragment of the grace Kara has.

Once they reach New Jericho—an assortment of apartments and repurposed warehouses—it is time to get repairs. Connor attempts to insist both Josh and Kara be seen before him, but the technician evaluates them objectively, and Connor gets to be second in line after Josh.

He doesn’t expect Josh to be standing there and waiting for him when he gets out of the med bay, but there he is, posture loose, arms hanging at his sides, his expression more relaxed than Connor thinks he’s ever seen him before. For a few moments, the pair of them just look at each other, then finally, Connor breaks the silence.

“Did they manage to fix everything?” It’s an awkward, roundabout way of asking _are you okay?—_ but Josh isn’t a widespread commercial model, so Connor worries if they’ve had all the necessary parts for him. At the very least, he looks whole upon first glance—and a moment later, he nods, confirming what Connor was hoping for.

“What about you?”

Connor gives a small shrug, and a smile. His parts are definitely harder to come by, but thankfully, his skill set also made sure he didn’t get too grievously injured, aside from that one last fight; he only needed a few smaller fixes, and the rest is currently being taken care of by his own self-repair subroutines.

Josh doesn’t seem to need more of an answer, but his face goes serious anyway. “Thank you,” he says solemnly, “for coming for us.”

Connor stuffs his hands into his pockets and wraps his fingers around the newly acquired coin in there. He doesn’t know what to say to that. “We got out together,” he says with an awkward shrug. He’s reminded of the exchange he shared with Markus after the Tower. _Together_ is something he is still getting used to, after having been made to hunt his own people—but Josh nods as if this is the most natural thing in the world, and he, too, holds a hand out for Connor to take, fingertips going white in a now well-known fashion.

Through the interface, a mixture of complicated emotions washes over him. Gratitude and relief, for sure, but also… remorse. Josh is apologizing wordlessly, and it strikes Connor like a pile of bricks, how familiar it feels. _I’m sorry I took so long. I should have known what the right thing to do was sooner._ Connor knows this intimately; has felt it before Jericho fell, looking into Markus’ unwavering gaze.

Now, he looks into Josh’s, and grasps his hand properly, sending a simple reassurance in return.

What truly matters is that they are all here now, even if they’ve all made sacrifices along the way. Connor thinks of the interface between him and Kara and Alice, and this one now between him and Josh, and he can’t help but feel like they’ve also all gained something along the way, too.

What truly comes of it remains to be seen, but Connor thinks he can live with that.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Discord in the [New ERA server](https://discord.gg/GqvNzUm) to chat about androids getting hurt (among other things)!


End file.
